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Happiness is in short supply at work these days. Deadlines, staff shortages, productivity pressures and crazy stress push even the most talented and temperate people to want to quit their jobs. But that’s not a realistic option, even for folks in the C-suite. Annie McKee, director of the Penn CLO and Medical Education programs at the University of Pennsylvania where she teaches leadership and emotional intelligence, has a better idea. In her book, How To Be Happy At Work, she outlines three requirements that workers need to feel more fulfilled on the job. McKee spoke about the concepts in her book on the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Knowledge@Wharton: How many people do you think are not happy at work?

Annie McKee: I don’t think we even have to guess. Gallup has been studying people for years, and upwards of two-thirds of us are either neutral, which means we don’t care, or we’re actively disengaged. Disengagement and happiness go hand in hand, so an awful lot of people are not happy at work. Unhappy people don’t perform as well as they could. When we’re negative, cynical, pessimistic, we simply don’t give our all, and our brains don’t work that well just when we need people’s brains to be working beautifully.

Knowledge@Wharton: Has this problem ramped up in the last two decades or so? As much as digital is phenomenal for us, a lot of people feel under pressure because of what digital does to accelerate change.

McKee: The world is changing at a rapid pace, obviously. As much as we love our always-connected world, it can mean that we work all of the time. We’re always one minute away from that next email that’s going to bring tragedy or crisis to our working lives. Some of us never turn it off, and that’s not good for us.

Knowledge@Wharton: Where did your idea for the book come from?

McKee: I’ve worked in organizations all over the world for decades now. I’ve looked at leadership practices, emotional intelligence, culture and all of those things that impact the bottom line and people’s individual effectiveness. I decided to take another look and see what people were trying to tell us. All of these studies that we did around the world were practical studies. People were telling us, “I want to be happy, I want to be fulfilled, I want to love my job, I’m not as happy or as fulfilled as I could be, and here is what I need.” And then they went on to tell us what they need.

Knowledge@Wharton: Are executives aware of their employees’ problems? Are they also aware that they may susceptible to this?

“Unhappy people don’t perform as well as they could.”

McKee: It doesn’t matter where you sit in the organization, you are susceptible to disengagement and unhappiness even at the very top. We think if you’re making all of that money and you’ve got all of that power and that great job, it’s going to be perfect. The best leaders in our organizations, at the very top and all the way down to the shop floor, understand that people matter, feelings matter, and it’s job number one to create a climate where people feel good about what they’re doing where they’re happy, engaged and ready to share their talents.

Knowledge@Wharton: What are the key ingredients to finding that happiness?

McKee: From my work, I’ve discovered three things. Number one, people feel that they need to have impact on something that is important to them, whether it’s people or a cause or the bottom line. They need to feel that their work is purposeful, and it’s tied to values that they care about.

Number two, we need to feel optimistic that our work is tied to a personal vision of the future. The organization’s vision isn’t enough. As good as it may be, we have to know that what we’re doing ties to a personal vision of our future.

Number three, we need friends at work. We’ve learned over the course of our lives you shouldn’t be friends with people at work, that it’s dangerous somehow, that it will cloud your judgment. I don’t agree. I think we need to feel that we are with our tribe in the workplace, that we belong, that we’re with people that we respect and who respect us in return. We need warmth, we need caring, and we need to feel supported.

Knowledge@Wharton: I would think most people looking for a job, whether they are coming out of college or shifting careers mid-life, are looking for that area that would make them happy. When you have that expectation of being in the right sector to begin with, you hope that you have the happiness to go along with it.

Knowledge@Wharton High School

McKee: We do hope that we get into the right organization and there’s a good fit between our values and the organization’s values. We really try hard. But we get in there and the pressures of everyday life, and the crises and the stress can really tamp down our enthusiasm and our happiness.

Also, a lot of us are susceptible to what I call happiness traps. We end up doing what we think we should do. We take that job with that fancy consulting firm or that wonderful organization not because we love it and not because it’s a fit, but because we think we should. Frankly, some of us have ambition that goes into overdrive. Ambition is a great thing, until it’s not.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is that part of the reason why we see more people who have been with a company for 20 years, 25 years and suddenly pivot? They may be going to work for a nonprofit. You see these stories popping up, especially with people in the C-suite.

McKee: You do see that. You see senior leaders all of a sudden saying, “Enough is enough, I [want to do] something different.” But I really want to be clear, you don’t always have to run away. In fact, you want to run towards something. If you feel you’re not happy in the workplace, quitting your job is probably not the first answer, and some of us can’t. What we need to do is figure out what we need, what we want, how to have impact, what will make us feel hopeful about our future, what kind of people we want to work with and for, and then go find that either in our organization or elsewhere.

Happiness starts inside each of us. It’s tempting to blame that toxic boss or that horrible organizational culture, and those things may be true. But if you want to be happy at work, you first have to look inside and ask what is it that you want? What will make you feel fulfilled? Which happiness traps have you fallen prey to? And get yourself out.

Knowledge@Wharton: What are the happiness traps?

McKee: There’s what I call the “should” trap. We do what we think we should do. We show up to work acting like someone we’re not. That is soul-destroying, and it’s fairly common. [There’s also] the “ambition” trap. When our ambition drives us from goal to goal and we don’t even stop to celebrate the accomplishment of those goals, something is wrong.

Some of us feel helpless, stuck. The “helplessness” trap may be the most serious of all. It’s really hard to get out of because we don’t feel we have any power. My message is we have a lot more power and control over not only our attitude but what we do and how we approach our work on a daily basis and in the long term than maybe we think we do.

“Ambition is a great thing, until it’s not.”

Knowledge@Wharton: Earlier in your life, you found yourself fitting into these patterns as well.

McKee: I did. Early in my life I wasn’t teaching in a wonderful institution like Penn. I didn’t even have what you would call a professional career. I had jobs like waiting tables and cleaning houses and taking care of elderly people. I was making ends meet. And it wasn’t easy.

I had two choices, I could either say to myself this is miserable and I hate it, or I could look for something that was fulfilling in what I did. I tried to do that. I did find aspects of my job, whether it was cleaning houses and feeling like I was doing a good job or finding a mentor in some of these workplaces, that really made it worthwhile to me.

Knowledge@Wharton: Do you have to be 100% happy all of the time? I think if you can find areas of happiness, it can make your job or your life so much easier to go through.

McKee: Happiness isn’t just about feeling good every moment of the day, and it’s not just about pleasure. That’s hedonism, and we’re not seeking that. Frankly, a little bit of stress is a good thing. It pushes us to be innovative and to do things differently and to push harder. So, it’s not about just feeling good. But we do need a foundation of purpose, hope and friendships. We do need to know that what we do matters at work, that we are doing something that is tied to our future, and that the people we work with are great.

Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned taking the time to recognize your accomplishments, but there are companies that want you to push on to the next project. They don’t give you the opportunity to slow down even for an hour to enjoy it.

McKee: Most of our organizations are really hard-driving, especially publicly traded organizations. I’m not even sure they’re that different than other institutions these days. The pressure is on everywhere, and the reality is we do move from project to project, goal to goal. What choices can we make in the middle of that culture? We don’t have to be victims of our organizational culture, and we don’t have to be victims of that bad boss you might have or maybe you’ve had in the past. We can make choices about what we do with our time, our energy and our emotional stance.

Knowledge@Wharton: Going back to the friends component in the workplace, does it matter where those friends come from within the structure of the company? A lot of people say you have to be careful if you want to try to be friends with the boss.

McKee: It doesn’t matter where your friends are, but it does matter whether or not you have your eyes open and recognize what people are thinking about how you are behaving and who you are friends with. You’ve got to be aware of your organization’s culture and the rules of the road.

If you’re violating some of those rules — for example, going up the hierarchy and building friendships with people who are a couple levels above you or maybe in another division — you need to understand what the implications of that are. And you need to be maybe a little bit careful.

Knowledge@Wharton: How does the middle manager deal with this?

McKee: Middle managers get it from all sides. They are pulled in every direction, and it is probably the hardest job in any organization. They, more than anybody, need to hear this message. Life is too short to be unhappy at work. Middle managers have a tremendous impact on the people who work for them, and recognizing that you more than anybody are the creator and the curator of the culture in the organization is an important place to start.

Knowledge@Wharton: Sometimes managers forget about the life people have outside of work.

McKee: We’re here at the Wharton School, and we’ve been studying management now for over 100 years. Some of the early approaches to managing organizations are really destructive, and one of the aspects of that early research has been the attitude that people don’t matter and that private lives ought to be left at the door of the office. It’s impossible to leave our private lives at the door of the office. It doesn’t mean that we talk about it all of the time, but we bring our experiences with us and we bring our feelings with us. Managers need to recognize that.

It’s also hard to find what is commonly called work-life balance. By the way, I don’t like that phrase. I think it’s a myth. I don’t think there is any magic formula that says if we get it just right we’re going to be happy at work and happy at home. It’s more about understanding that the lines are blurred between work and home now, and we need to learn how to manage our choices and our attention.

Knowledge@Wharton: What about those who work remotely and can feel very isolated and disconnected?

McKee: I understand the isolation and feeling kind of left out. The reality is that it takes a lot more effort to build relationships when we work remotely. We need to take time. When we’re working remotely, we get on the phone, we do the work that needs to be done, we talk about the project, and we get off the phone. That leaves us feeling kind of empty. We need to take that extra five minutes to have a chat, have a laugh, feel like we are in a relationship with somebody. It takes effort and self-management because the temptation is to just do the work. You talk about the gig economy, right? We’re all sort of working in a portfolio manner these days. We take on this bit of work and that bit of work, and much of it is virtual.

“Life is too short to be unhappy at work.”

I think we need to figure this out because the bottom line is that we have not changed as human beings. We still need to feel like we belong, we need to feel that we’re cared for, and we need to be able to care for others in return. If we’re working far away, we’ve got to take extra time and make a concerted effort to build those relationships in a different kind of way than if we’re in person.

I’m a big proponent of working from home or working remotely. I think it’s really helpful to individuals and companies. People who are able to work at home feel trusted, and when you feel trusted you are more committed to your organization. A lot of people report being able to get more done away from the office because you don’t have the interruptions. The downside is that you have to find a way to keep the relationships fresh and alive because that’s as important as getting that project done.

Knowledge@Wharton: Companies seem to be more aware of employee happiness than they used to be, which is a good thing. Do you think we’re going to continue down that path?

McKee: Companies are more aware, so are enlightened CEOs and enlightened leaders. I think we will continue down the path for the following reasons. It’s not just nice-to-have, and it’s not just about feeling good. We’ve got solid research coming out of positive psychology, neuroscience and management that tells us that feelings matter. When we feel good, we’re smarter. And we need smart employees now. We need people who are committed, who are engaged. The research is pretty clear. Happiness before success. If we want our employees to be at their best, we need to care about their emotional well-being as well as their physical well-being.

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Anumakonda Jagadeesh

Maintaining a level of happiness at work has become more significant and relevant due to the intensification of work caused by economic uncertainty and increase in competition. Nowadays, it is viewed by a growing number of scholars and senior executives as one of the major sources of positive outcomes in the workplace.
Ryan and Deci offer a definition for happiness in two views: happiness as being hedonic accompanied with enjoyable feelings and desirable judgments and they define happiness as being eudemonic, which involves doing virtuous, moral and meaningful things. Schimmack explains that the hedonic alternative is usually found in research on subjective well-being which outlines two related elements: life satisfaction, judgment and affect stability or having a superiority of positive feelings or less negative feelings. Watson et al. claims that the most important approach to explain an individual’s experience, such as the structure of mood and emotions, is in a hedonic tone (pleasantness-unpleasantness). Warr describes the hedonic approach as being concerned with pleasant feelings, satisfying judgments, self-validation and self-actualization. In other words, in order for one to live a happy life one must be concerned with doing virtuous, moral and meaningful things while utilising personal talents and skills. However, some psychologist argue that hedonic happiness is unstable over a long period of time, especially in the absence of eudaimonic well-being.
While happiness is not fundamentally rooted in obtaining sensual pleasures and money, those factors can influence the well- being of an individual at the workplace.[12] However, extensive research has revealed that freedom at a workplace and autonomy has the most effect on the employee’s levels of happinessas well as gaining knowledge and ability to influence one’s individual working hours.
Companies with higher than average employee happiness exhibit better financial performance and customer satisfactionThus, it is beneficial for companies to create and maintain positive work environments and leadership that will contribute to the happiness of their employees.
Organisational culture represents the internal work environment created for operating an organisation. It can also represent how employees are treated by their bosses and peers. Therefore, an effective organisation should have a culture that takes into account employee’s happiness and encourages employee satisfaction. Job satisfaction or employee satisfaction is defined as a personal evaluation of conditions present in the job or outcomes that arise as a result of having job. Therefore, job satisfaction has to do with individual’s talents and preferences. Although each individual has unique talents and personal preferences, the behaviors and beliefs of the people in the same organizations show common properties. This, to some extent, helps organisations to create their own cultural properties.
As members in an organisation work together to perform a job, the created culture will, in turn, enable the members in the organisation to understand each other and work in a more comfortable environment. Jarow concludes that employee feels satisfied not through comparisons with other peers, but through his/her own happiness and awareness of being in harmony with their colleagues. He uses a term called “carrier” to represent lack of happiness, life in constant tension and never-ending struggle for status.
There are many reasons that can contribute to happiness at work. However, when individuals are asked with regards to why they work, money is one of the most common answers[19] as it provides people with sustenance, security and privilege. To a large extent, people work to live, and the pecuniary aspect of the work is what sustains the living. Locke, Feren, McCaleb Shaw and Denny argued that no other incentive or motivational technique comes even close to money with respect to its instrumental value.
The income-happiness relationship in life can also be applied in organisational psychology. Some studies have found positively significant relationships between salary level and job satisfaction. Some have suggested that income and happiness at work are positively correlated, and the relationship is stronger for individuals with extrinsic value orientations.
As opposed to the positive relationship between pay level and job satisfaction, some concluded that salary, in itself, is not a very strong factor in job satisfaction. Added to this, hundreds of studies and scores of systematic reviews of incentive studies consistently document the ineffectiveness of external rewards.The question regarding this subject is recently studied by a group of people, including Judge and his colleagues. Their research shows that the intrinsic relationship between job and salary is complex. In this research, they analysed the combined impact of many existing studies to produce a much larger and statistically powerful analysis. More specifically, they study the correlations between employees’ compensation and the well-being achieved from jobs by looking at 86 previous studies. This research is of great significance, in that it illustrates the great dilemma for employers when it comes to pay. There is a large number of parameters, not just with respect to the link between jobs and salary, but in how money is valued. It is probably true to say that money is a driver of employee’s happiness. However, it is transitory as well. Judge and his colleagues have reminded us that money may not necessarily make employees happy.
Job security is an important factor to determine whether employee feel happiness at work. Different types of jobs have different levels of job security. In some situations, a position is expected to be offered for a long time, whereas in other jobs an employee may be forced to resign his/ her job. Hence, this aspect is refer to determine the likelihood of losing one’s job. The expectation of the job availability has been related with the job-related well-being and the high level of job security corresponds to high level of job satisfaction alongside a high level of well-being. It seems that in job security more emphasis is put on desirable outcomes rather than undesirable ones, therefore, employees are more likely to include job security as an important element of having a positive outlook on the future.
The opportunity for promote or give a position that obviously capitalises on personal skills in one’s career is an important characteristic in occupational environment. In essence, the progression of career is grown from bottom up in an employment hierarchy. However, there are also other forms of career development, involving indirect work movement, shifts to another roles.
The option for moving or shifting to alternative roles motivates the employee’s participation in the workplace meaning if employee can see the future potential for a promotion, motivation levels will increase. By contrast, if an organisation does not provide any potential for higher status position in the future, the employee’s effectiveness in work will decrease. In addition, the employee may consider whether or not the position would be offer to them in the future. On the other hand, not all of the opportunities for transferring into another activity are aimed to obtain the upward movement. In some cases, they are aimed to prevent the skills obsolescence, provides more future career possibility, as well as directly increasing the skill development.
In relations to the work place, successful leadership will structure and develop relationships amongst employees and consequently, employees will empower each other.
Kurt Lewin argued that there are 3 main styles of leaderships:
1. Autocratic leaders: control the decision-making power and do not consult team members.
2. Democratic leaders: include team members in the decision-making process but make the final decisions.
3. Laissez-faire leaders: team members have huge freedom in how they do their work, and how they set their deadlines.
Management plays an important role in an employee’s job satisfaction and happiness. Good leadership can empower employees to work better towards reaching the organisation’s goals. For example, if a leader is considerate, the employees will tend to develop a positive attitude towards management and thus, work more effectively.
Feelings, including happiness, are often hidden by employees and should be identified for effective communication in the workplace. Ineffective communication at work is not uncommon, as leaders tend to focus on their own matters and give less attention to employees at a lower rank. Employees, on the other hand, tend to be reluctant to talk about their own problem and assume leaders can figure out the problem. As a result, both leaders and employees can cause repetitive misunderstandings
Although there are a few surveys used to measure the happiness or well-being level of people in different countries such as the World Happiness Report, the Happy Planet Index and the OECD Better Life Index, there are no surveys that measure happiness in the specific context of the workplace. There are, however, surveys created to assess the job satisfaction level of employees. Even though job satisfaction is a different concept, it is positively correlated to happiness and subjective well-being. The main job satisfaction scales are: The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), The Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) assesses nine facets of job satisfaction, as well as overall satisfaction. The facets include pay and pay raises, promotion opportunities, relationship with the immediate supervisor, fringe benefits, rewards given for good performance, rules and procedures, relationship with coworkers, type of work performed and communication within the organization. The scale contains thirty-six items and uses a summated rating scale format. The JSS can provide ten scores. Each of the nine subscales produce a separate score and the total of all items produces a total score. The Job Descriptive Index (JDI) scale assesses five facets which are work, pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers. The entire scale contains seventy-two items with either nine or eighteen items per subscale. Each item is an evaluative adjective or short phrase that is descriptive of the job. The individual has to respond “yes”, “uncertain” or “no” for each item. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) has two versions, a one hundred item long version and a twenty item short form. It covers twenty facets including activity, independence, variety, social status, supervision (human relations), supervision (technical), moral values, security, social service, authority, ability utilization, company policies and practices, compensation, advancement, responsibility, creativity, working conditions, coworkers, recognition and achievement. The long form contains five items per facet, while the short one contains only one(Wikipedia).
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India